A story behind every grave

Tour explores history of Riverview Cemetery

Tour explores history of Riverview Cemetery

July 14, 2008|JUDY BRADFORD Tribune Correspondent

SOUTH BEND -- The funeral for the Lincoln School eighth-grader drew Boy Scouts from all over the region.

Kenneth Grove Borough, a fellow Scout, was killed along with four others and their three adult Scoutmasters when their boat sank on a Michigan lake during a Saturday scout outing in the spring of 1922. The boyÂ?s grave stone is located in Riverview Cemetery, along with a handful of others marking the final resting place of those who met with tragic deaths.

They were the focus of the latest cemetery tour sponsored by the Center for History, and researched and presented by Travis Childs, director of school programs.

This was one of the more somber tours, but certainly no less fascinating. Childs picked deaths from a particular era, the 1920s and 1930s, when people were also doing some wild things Â? sometimes without a whole lot of equipment or technology. Take, for instance, 16-year-old Peerless Burr Keyes. He and his brother decided to practice being Â?human flies,Â? a popular activity of the day, and climb up the outside of a downtown building on June 20, 1924. He made it only to the second story and fell.

Â?When his brother climbed down to talk to the police, he said they were climbing with the hopes of becoming professional human flies,Â?Â? Childs told the tour crowd.

Then there were the backroom brawls Â? and the unmarked graves.

Buried somewhere near a tree along the south road in the cemetery is Jack Forcia, also known as Thomas Forcia, a.k.a. Jack Night, a.k.a. Thomas Night. On March 14, 1931, he was shot while playing cards at the Star Cigar Store, then located downtown at 131 E. Jefferson St., South Bend.

His demise wasnÂ?t over the cards, however. Another player with a hot temper and a flirty girlfriend got mad when she flirted with Jack, or Thomas, or whatever his name was that night.

Overgrown with tiger lilies is the grave of Helen June Huston, another teenager who, while preparing to take a bath, was overcome by the carbon monoxide fumes emitted from the gas water heater in the bathroom.

Â?It took a while to find her grave, because of all the flowers,Â?Â? said Childs, who, in fact, worked many hours to find all the graves because of the way Riverview is laid out. Lacking any kind of straight grid, the graves are laid out every which way, and sometimes even facing each other.

Childs visited the cemetery at least four times, and did research about three to four hours per day, for a month, using funeral home records and old Tribune stories to flesh out the details of the deaths.

Riverview Cemetery, in itself, has a story to tell. The first white European to view the piece of land on the northwest side of South Bend was Robert LaSalle, the French explorer who crossed here in 1679.

In fact, the path he used as part of his portage from the St. Joseph River to the Kankakee River is located in the cemetery. Just travel the paved road to an intersection past the crematory/columbarium. Off to the right, youÂ?ll see the entrance to a dark path densely flanked by two rows of trees.

The land became a farm and in 1845, was turned into a commune. But the group that bought it for a commune didnÂ?t commune well. They disbanded in 1846 due to infighting, and the land slowly became a burial ground.

The cemetery is a place where Â?if you were anybody, you were buried here,Â? said Childs. The Olivers, the Wymans and the Studebakers all have mausoleums there.

But if you were just a city police chief, like Samuel J. Lenon was in 1931, you rest in peace now because, at the age of 55, you shot yourself because you couldnÂ?t solve the four murders that had occurred recently under your watch. Lenon is buried next to his wife Edith, who joined him in 1965.